It can be easy to miss the small storefront in Far North Dallas, tucked behind a gas station, near a dry cleaner and pizza shop.

But at Zamykal Gourmet Kolaches, Tara McGraw and her aunt Judé Routh are reviving a family tradition of making the same sweet, doughy kolaches that their Czech ancestors brought to Texas.

McGraw restarted the family’s kolache business this fall, about three years after her mom’s cancer diagnosis and death shuttered the first store. She says selling the homemade confections has given her a sense of purpose and path to financial independence after becoming a single parent from divorce. Each bite of doughy pastry and generous dollop of filling is a taste of her mother’s legacy.

McGraw, 37, is the owner and her aunt, Judé Routh, 63, is the executive baker. They have nine employees.

"She's the creative side of it all, and I'm the tasting side of it all," McGraw jokes.

Tara McGraw and Judé Routh explain the difference between a klobasniky, a wrapped sausage, and a kolache, a sweet pastry, at Zamykal Gourmet Kolaches on Keller Springs Road in Dallas. (Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)

Kolaches came to Texas with Czech immigrants who brought their family recipes along with their suitcases. The pastries, which began as a delicacy for weddings, are made of puffy, pillow-like dough and typically have fruit or cream cheese filling in the middle. In Texas, one of the most famous kolache spots is West, a town of about 2,900 people with a strong Czech heritage and annual festival. Its kolache shop, Czech Stop, has become a popular place for travelers to refuel when shuttling between Dallas and Austin on Interstate 35.

But for travelers headed to College Station, Zamykal Kolaches in Calvert became a common road trip stop. The town of about 1,100 people is about 150 miles south of Dallas. McGraw’s mother, Jody Powers, stood outside her shop and flagged down Texas A&M students, football fans and others driving through the town. She wrote her own “Kolache Song,” which she used to serenade passers-by. She got the nickname “Crazy Kolache Lady” and was featured on Texas Country Reporter.

Powers ran the first Zamykal Kolaches for about a decade. She used the same recipe that her grandma Zamykal brought to Flatonia, Texas, in 1918, but she put her own spin on it with new flavors like key lime, pumpkin and raspberry truffle. She lived above the shop, working the dough by hand in the evenings and taking catnaps in the early mornings while the dough rose and pastries baked. Her identical twin, Judé Routh, helped with the shop and eventually picked up the kolache-making technique.

Jody Powers put her own spin on a family kolache recipe by coming up with flavors like key lime and raspberry truffle. Now, her daughter and sister are experimenting with new flavors like mint chocolate chip. (Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)

Routh closed the shop in 2014, after Powers began treatment for multiple myeloma. After months of doctor appointments, cancer treatments and a stem cell transplant, Powers died in March 2015.

The shop stayed shuttered for nearly two years, until Routh and McGraw both found themselves in need of work. Routh had been laid off from a job in Houston. McGraw, who was a stay-at-home mom when married, needed to find work again.

They went to the Calvert shop and gathered up all of the kitchen supplies — pots and pans, trays, a standup mixer, spatulas and an oven. They began baking and selling kolaches in Dallas, using the original store’s Facebook page.

“She put her everything into that place and she loved it,” McGraw said. “She loved the customers. She loved her job. It was almost like bringing a piece of her back.”

Orders picked up. Customers began asking when they’d open a store.

McGraw cleaned out her closets and threw garage sales to scrounge up cash. She sold a vintage pickup truck. She used money she’d inherited from her dad. She saved up from eight months of kolache sales on Facebook. She stashed away money from her divorce proceedings.

In the kitchen, executive baker Judé Routh (left) and the staff stay busy making kolaches at Zamykal Gourmet Kolaches on Keller Springs Road. They make 600 kolaches a day — or 900 on busy days. (Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)

When a nail salon moved out of a nearby strip mall, McGraw signed a lease for the spot. She said she spent about $200,000 to turn the salon into a bakery and stock it with two more ovens and kitchen supplies. She decorated the shop with her mom’s photos, newspaper clippings and awards and the sign from the first Zamykal Kolaches.

Each day, they bake 600 kolaches. On busy days, that number can rise to 900. When workdays run long, McGraw puts her 5-year-old son, Robert, in an apron and hat and has him hand out kolache samples or sell popcorn balls in exchange for a commission.

Tara McGraw takes a break from waving a towel to greet her son, Robert. Sometimes, she dresses the 5-year-old up in an apron and hat at the kolache store. (Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer)

McGraw built a new website for the shop, got a designer to make a unique logo and started monitoring comments on Facebook and Yelp, modes of marketing that her mom never had. But she still relies on an old-fashioned approach that her mom used.

On early mornings and late afternoons, you can find McGraw dancing and waving a towel on a Far North Dallas street corner. Some drivers honk and roll down the window. Others look on with confusion.

Her message is written on a small chalkboard: “Kolaches make people happy.”

Her mom used to dance and sing to invite people to try her kolaches near the one stoplight in Calvert. McGraw jokes that she inherited the gene of not being embarrassed easily.

Plus, the dancing and singing, she says, helps offset her kolache habit.